A Taste of Success for KP Screenwriter, Director and Video Editor CarrieAnn Lee

“The Best Gifts” earned a variety of awards at film festivals across the country and is available for streaming on Amazon Prime.

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Filmmaker CarrieAnn Lee, 66, wrote her first play about a flying turtle at age 9. “I was hooked early on,” she said. Lee has been writing ever since.

Lee’s latest creation, "The Best Gifts", is her first full-length feature film, earning a variety of awards at film festivals across the country. The film weaves together seven different true stories from Lee’s life. The message of the film highlights Christmas gifts that are not commercial. The “gifts” are spiritual in content but not attached to any one particular religious denomination.

Filmed locally over 18 months, it features local actors and crew. The Taylor Bay Bridge, Cost Less Pharmacy, and her own home are a sample of scene locations. A total of 130 people were involved in the project. The 75-minute film is available on Amazon Prime.

Lee started work on the film in the fall of 2021 featuring amateur actors and a budget of $15,000. Friends and family helped with equipment. Her specialty is family-friendly entertainment.

The Best Gifts has received five awards, including Best Director, Best Inspirational Film, Best First Time Director, Best Faith-Based Film, and Best Indie Feature. The film also garnered an honorable mention and other acknowledgments from faith-based film festivals across the county. Lee traveled to Georgia, Florida, and West Virginia to enter her films in prestigious faith-based venues.

Ron Allred, a family friend, received an honorable mention for his acting in the film.

“I love helping CarrieAnn out,” Allred said. “It was a lot of fun to see the process, doing multiple takes and seeing what appears on the screen, seeing it all come together. Working hard pays off. If I have the chance, I would do it again.”

Lee and her husband, Kerry, married 45 years ago and have lived on the Key Peninsula for more than 25 of those years, raising 10 children. When her youngest child went to school full-time, Lee began writing plays in earnest. The plays have given way to screenwriting and short films. She began to submit her work to various writing contests, where many of them got positive attention but did not get picked up for production.

The Nichols Fellowship Contest, an international screenwriting competition to identify and encourage new screenwriters, offered Lee a scholarship to the Seattle Film Institute. She accepted and began classes in 2013. After three semesters, however, she dropped out due to family issues and the Seattle commute. Lee said it was a valuable learning experience, enabling a strong start to her filmmaking career when she resumed her efforts four years later.

“There are very few women movie writers,” Lee said.

Maggie Vail traveled from Florida to assist with the filming. She also happens to be Lee’s oldest daughter. Vail sees her mother as a role model for women pursuing this career path. She’s watched her mother work single-handed, on a tight budget, managing every aspect of making a film. “She works through difficulties and is committed to getting a big task done."

“Because she didn’t have much of a budget, she had to be really creative,” Vail said. She built relationships with Key Peninsula stores to use their facilities and even learned how to animate snow for her film. She turned an old shed into a manger. She learned to edit out unanticipated sounds.

“This has taken thousands of hours of work,” Vail said.

Lee uses YouTube to learn more about the craft of filmmaking, including colorization, timing, and editing. She has completed 11 short films and is working on a documentary about prayer.

Audrey Derr, a 16-year-old junior at Peninsula High School, played the part of an older sister, with a monologue to memorize.

“I didn’t know what I was getting into when I said yes to being in the film,” Derr said. She found it surprising to learn how intentional every action, inflection, or movement is. She said the film experience made her better prepared for her part in the PHS production of Willy Wonka.

Greg Cook also featured in a small role in "The Best Gifts." He filmed the scenes using drone technology. It was his first experience filming for a movie.

“It was different, with live actors moving in a scene, getting the angles and altitude right, and speed to capture a scene,” Cook said Lee found ways to “pull great scenes out of any footage.”

A complete list of Lee’s films and awards is on her website at OLwomanintheshoefilms.com.


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